


Blooming Up from the Ground

by sagetan



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-12 00:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3337988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagetan/pseuds/sagetan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hinata breaks Tsukishima's glasses, because he is a little shit. At least Yamaguchi's around to mitigate the worst of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blooming Up from the Ground

"Stairs," says the amorphous blur at his side with a tug to Tsukishima's shirtsleeve. 

Now that he's been told, the change in quality of light and the patter of echoing steps become obvious. 

Yamaguchi doesn't let go even after Tsukishima successfully negotiates the first landing with a minimum of flailing. His hangdog hovering is an almost tangible thing, two steps behind and just off to the side. Tsukishima tightens his fingers on the handrail and doesn't tug his elbow free.

"I'm going to shove my whole foot down his throat," he says. Yamaguchi makes fretful placating noises.

"Ah, Tsukki… I'm sure he didn't mean to."

"After breaking both his kneecaps. Also his fingers."

"It was an accident. And you know, Hinata does do a surprisingly good impression of you."

He can't quite tell if Yamaguchi is fucking with him or not, on account of his face looking like a generic beige blob at the moment. Tsukishima tries squinting for a bit, but it doesn't help at all.

"Anyway, you have a spare pair at home, don't you?"

He is now being shepherded toward the cafeteria, the halls full of brightly coloured smudges and more beige blobs. The usual lunchtime chatter is deafening today. Tsukishima's ears feel very warm. 

"Hurry up and get your lunch already," he says, shrugging Yamaguchi's fingers off at last and escaping for a surly piss.

It's a near thing, but Yamaguchi manages to catch him before he storms right into the girls' bathroom.

\--

Math class is interminable. Yamaguchi diligently copies down the problems on the board in duplicate and slips him a copy. 

Light pours murkily through the windows. Everything is too bright, all the familiar hard lines smudged beyond recognition. Tsukishima thinks longingly of drawn curtains and of his bed.

When Yamaguchi gets called on to answer a problem he didn't have time to finish, Tsukishima mumbles, "Square root of three," to page 255 of his textbook.

"Thanks, Tsukki," Yamaguchi whispers after, crumpling gratefully into his seat.

Tsukishima pretends he didn't hear him. He spends the better part of the remaining hour making very small paper airplanes out of old handouts and thinking about tossing them in Yamaguchi's direction.

\--

At practice, he grimly blocks all of Hinata's spikes and aims his own with bloody-minded focus. Sure, it makes him predictable, but Hinata's yelps are more than worth it, even if the ball never quite gets him in the face.

"Whoa, scary! We should break his glasses more often, get him revved up for big matches," whispers Tanaka-san very loudly when they're putting the nets away.

"A-ahaha... I don't think that's a very good idea," says Yamaguchi. He meets Tsukishima's eyes over Tanaka-san's shoulder and smiles apologetically. 

Tsukishima wonders if he's been making that face all day. He frowns, and Yamaguchi's smile falters. His freckles stand out very starkly under the gym's fluorescents.

"Good work!" says Nishinoya-san, punching Tsukishima square in the kidney on the way to the lockers.

"Oof," he says. Nishinoya-san is already gone when he recovers, his hoots and cackles lingering like a bad smell. Kageyama smirks at him in passing, a cowering Hinata clinging to the back of his jersey. 

Tsukishima is very ready for the day to be over. He considers keeping his goggles on for the walk home, appearances be damned. 

Yamaguchi touches his elbow. "Ready, Tsukki?"

He takes the goggles off and shoulders his bag.

\--

At the convenience store, Tsukishima spends too long squinting at a handful of coins, popsicle warming rapidly in his other hand. Yamaguchi wordlessly picks out the right change from his palm, pays, and curls Tsukishima's fingers closed around the rest. 

Outside, Sawamura-san brandishes a bag and says, "Pork buns on me, everyone."

"And then the robot went, pwuiw pwuiiiiw! It was so cool!"

"Shut up, dumbass! You're spoiling the ending."

"Thanks, Daichi."

"Here, have another one, Asahi-san!"

"T-thanks…"

Tsukishima clutches a fistful of sweaty coins the rest of the way home.

Some time after parting ways with the others, Yamaguchi nudges him with a companionable shoulder and says, "This is your street, Tsukki."

A car rushes by very close to the sidewalk, a rumbling red blur that's there and gone in a blink. A truck's horn blares loudly in the middle distance.

Tsukishima doesn't say anything.

"Um. Okay." Even this close, he can't tell what Yamaguchi's face is doing. 

They stand in silence, waiting for the pedestrian light to change. After a while, Yamaguchi takes hold of his wrist without asking and guides him across the street. He doesn't let go once they've reached the other side and starts heading toward Tsukishima's house.

Tsukishima lets himself be led, an unbelievable warmth licking up his neck. He can't make out any of the faces on the street, and for the first time today that's just fine by him.

Yamaguchi lingers at the front door after Tsukishima has let himself in.

"Well?" he says impatiently, and turns away from the open door without waiting for an answer. He hears Yamaguchi hurry in after him, bang an elbow against the frame, and mutter a betrayed, "Oww."

His spare glasses are in the top right drawer of his desk. They're identical to the pair Hinata swiped from his bag after morning practice and predictably broke, the hopeless little shit. He doesn't go get them.

He puts the kettle on instead, and has to lean much too close to the stove to make out the dials.

"Ah, you got a new one!" says Yamaguchi from where he's standing by the living room bookshelf. 

"It's a saurolophus. My brother found it at a flea market."

"It's cute."

 _No, it's cool_ , Tsukishima doesn't say out loud.

They settle in with hot tea and open textbooks in the living room, Yamaguchi's arsenal of highlighters neatly lined up at his elbow. The afternoon light is a deep orange and the room smells of wafting jasmine.

"It's weird, seeing you without glasses."

Tsukishima glances up from his quadratic equation.

"What?"

"Ah— That's to say— Good weird! Um. But not in a weird-weird kind of way."

" _You're_ weird, Yamaguchi," he says without heat.

"Sorry, Tsukki," he says with a rueful laugh. "You just look really different like this."

Good weird? 

Suddenly, he really wants to know what face Yamaguchi is making, what his expressive eyebrows are doing, what shape his apologetic mouth is taking. He wants to see him.

He goes get his glasses.

When he gets back, Yamaguchi is hunched over the textbook with his head propped in his hand, neck twisted at an uncomfortable angle. He's chewing at the corner of his lips, an old habit he never quite shook, his flyaway hair a sweetly familiar mess.

Why hadn't he seen it before? It was so obvious now that he'd been shown.

"Ah. There's my good old Tsukki," says Yamaguchi when he glances up at the doorway, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

 _Here I am,_ he thinks, walking over to kneel down on Yamaguchi's side of the table on unsteady legs and taking hold of his wrist. Tsukishima watches his face carefully and ah— There they are, his expressive eyebrows, his apologetic mouth.

Any moment now, he'll come to his senses and drop his hand, withdraw, scramble back to his side of the table. Any moment, but not right now. Right now, Yamaguchi's whole chest hitches with a hiccup, his eyes very wide and his face very pale, the bare edge of his teeth gleaming between his lips. 

This is as far as Tsukishima's nerves will take him. He waits for the moment to end, a top spinning too close to the edge of the table.

"Tsukki…" says his brave Yamaguchi at last. Then his vision goes unfocused as Yamaguchi's face closes in on his, closer, closer, closer still until all that's left is jasmine tea, strawberry popsicles, and scalding heat.

Yamaguchi can't stop sighing into his mouth, his whole weight sagging against him and all his bony angles finding Tsukishima's soft spots unerringly.

Tsukishima pulls back just long enough to pluck his glasses off, and dives in for more.

END

**Author's Note:**

> For [tsukkiyamafest](http://tsukkiyamaforthesoul.tumblr.com/post/109641809229/tsukkiyamaforthesoul-alright-so-due-to-popular) prompt #10, "GIVE ME MY GLASSES BACK!!!!"
> 
> Title from the excellent Blind Pilot song [3 Rounds and a Sound](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juvwlEO-x2o).
> 
> It is not even a little close to the 10th anywhere in the world. Hope you enjoyed anyway!


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